Early in Janis: Little Girl Blue, we hear Janis Joplin talking about ambition and reducing it to the need to be loved. That need was a driving force in her life, her career, and even in her terrible struggles. Even forty-five years after her death, she continues to be an icon of rock and roll….
“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Macbeth is one of several plays by Shakespeare that could easily remind modern audiences of Game of…
French New Wave director Fran?ois Truffaut wrote the book on Alfred Hitchcock?literally. In 1962 he did a series of interviews (through a translator) with Hitchcock over six days with twenty seven hours of tapes discussing each of Hitchcock?s films. He later put gleanings from those interviews into one of the definitive books on filmmaking. In…
?If you put beauty into a place that generally doesn?t have it, that?s a game changer.? Can gardening change people?s lives? That is the question that led Delila Vallot to make Can You Dig This?, a documentary that features urban gardening in some of the must depressed areas of Los Angeles. The idea of guerrilla…
?In life going downhill is an uphill job.? Perhaps the most mind-boggling thing about The Lady in The Van is part of the writing credit: Written by Alan Bennett based on his memoir [emphasis mine]. It seems unbelievable that this situation has a basis in reality. Bennett, a playwright living in London, had a dirty,…
?We may not do the best service to what?s called ?national morale,? but we?ll do a small service to the truth.? In 1967 Egypt, Jordan, and Syria made plans to annihilate Israel. When the dust cleared, Israel not only successfully defended itself, it captured the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, and what are now the…
While The Wonders is a film about family, we see it through Gelsomina?s eyes. She is the one who dreams about something more and seems to hold things together when trouble comes. As far as the film goes, she is the queen bee.
With no dialogue and only a few minutes long, Sanjay?s Super Team teaches us lessons of faith and passing on traditions to new generations.
